My Turn: Timothy J. Babineau: No cause to panic about R.I health care

Saturday

Feb 10, 2018 at 3:00 PM

By Timothy J. Babineau

While Mark Twain was visiting London in 1897, someone started a rumor that he was gravely ill. According to a widely repeated legend, one American newspaper actually printed his obituary. When Twain was told about this by a reporter, he quipped: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

Listening to recent social discourse on the state of health care in Rhode Island, one could draw the same conclusion about our health-care system as the rumor of Twain’s death. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In recent months — in the wake of Memorial Hospital’s closure and Care New England’s continued merger discussions with an out-of-state health system — there has been a call from state, academic and community leaders for the creation of a unified health-care system. This comes with a belief that this is a watershed moment in our health-care history and failure to “act” will turn Rhode Island into a medical backwater. They want a health system that is sustainable, academically-based and locally controlled.

Thousands of Rhode Island patients know that such a system already exists. It’s called Lifespan.

Lifespan is not only the state’s largest health-care system but the most integrated and financially viable. Care and costs are controlled within the state, which is good for Rhode Island and Rhode Islanders. Formed more than 20 years ago, Lifespan includes Rhode Island Hospital, Hasbro Children's Hospital, The Miriam Hospital, Newport Hospital, Bradley Hospital, Gateway Healthcare and Lifespan Physician Group. Lifespan has 1,155 licensed inpatient beds and more than 100 outpatient locations and laboratory sites. In fiscal year 2017, Rhode Islanders were cared for at one of our hospitals, emergency departments or outpatient clinics more than 1 million times.

Lifespan’s impact on the lives of Rhode Islanders is obvious:

• 51 percent of patients requiring inpatient treatment (in our market of more than 1.5 million people) come to a Lifespan hospital.

• We are affiliated with more than 2,700 primary and specialty care physicians.

• We provide world-renowned specialty care in virtually every area of medicine including cancer, cardiac, pediatrics, neurosciences, trauma, orthopedics and behavioral health.

• Our research enterprise receives more than $80 million annually in grant funding and supports nearly 1,000 scientists.

• We educate the vast majority of medical students and residents in the state and provide a rich educational environment for nursing students and other health-care professionals.

Despite a terribly difficult operating environment and declining payments for our services, Lifespan has managed to grow and thrive over the past several years. We are fortunate to have an incredibly talented workforce of physicians, nurses, technicians, researchers, advanced practice providers, aides, support staff and administrators, who together as a team are responsible for our success.

Virtually every patient who comes to us with a serious illness receives diagnosis and treatment close to his or her home and work, and within one integrated health-care system — Lifespan. Our academic physician chairs and chiefs are among the best in the world. Three years ago, we invested more than $100 million in a single electronic health record (LifeChart) that enables our providers to seamlessly view and share patient information, resulting in better care coordination, increased efficiencies and better outcomes. As a national leader in improving quality and controlling costs, GE Healthcare chose Lifespan as a partner to help both organizations re-imagine how health care is delivered.

Lifespan does more than just weather the storm. We increased our workforce by nearly 25 percent from 2009 to 2017, to 14,882 employees — bucking statewide job growth trends. Last year, nearly 360 new jobs were added to the Lifespan system, with plans to add an additional 400 this year — assuming we remain on solid financial footing.

Along the way, Lifespan has invested $1 billion in facilities and infrastructure. And as a not-for-profit health-care system, we reinvest any positive operating margin back into our communities.

For the state and our residents, Rhode Island-based Lifespan — rather than health systems in California or Massachusetts — must take the lead, as we have always done. We recognize that we will not be able to meet the health-care needs of every Rhode Islander. Nor should we try.

We remain open and interested in working with all like-minded, mission oriented organizations that are truly dedicated to the health status of the patients we serve — patients who want their care to be both extraordinary and around the corner. The notion that world-class, academically-based health care does not exist in Rhode Island is like the rumor of Mark Twain’s death: “greatly exaggerated.”

Timothy J. Babineau, M.D., is the president and CEO of Lifespan.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.